iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

"jealousy journalist"

the other example here that comes to my mind would be something like Zambian mining (probably better ones, I've just worked on this)-- the need to keep the industry afloat can quickly undercut your ability to use the revenue for anything else

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 2h

yeah I can see this! but as yakov says I think taxes are the right move here, and the Norwegian case works as an example of why you'd do an SWF over that. more broadly I just worry people want public ownership to do things it can't well amidst market competition

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 3h

yeah and I think the better arguments here are: -sanders wants to slow/regulate AI too, and an SWF creates perverse incentives there -the us doesn't need any SWF because of dollar hegemony -my understanding is the Norwegian SWF is about avoiding Dutch disease, which isn't really relevant here

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 22h

the contradictions... they are sharpening....

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 22h

I like your focus on projecting as the problem here! in the same way I am roleplaying The Helpful Professor when I'm teaching, certain kinds of character can produce good results-- but the user's assumptions/attachments around that can still be harmful

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 22h

"generic competence without apparent personality" is also a character, also a personality, I just don't think we can avoid this. I agree entirely on the critiques here of, say, chibified personal assistant agents as mass market products! but I just think this is also all really thorny stuff

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 22h

this is good analysis-- but I wonder, the more something acts as an agent I think the more interest we have in it having personality-like characteristics. if the character the administrative AI "plays" is more proworker or just prosocial you get different outcomes, presumably

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 28/09/2026

Five months ago I was fired by the US government. Now, one of the biggest categories on the academic job market is "being right wing." I wrote about what's at stake. buttondown.com/anotherway/a...

buttondown.com

The "free speech" government fired me

"Free speech" advocates are killing free speech

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 30/09/2026

bsky.app/profile/henr... sneak peek though as this thought came from work on that and is part of the argument

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 30/09/2026

have a doorstopper of an article on automation history, AI agents, and the concept of agency that I can't wait to share once it's published

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Brian Schaffner @bfschaffner.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

we’re hiring an assistant professor in American politics 🐘 apply.interfolio.com/194599

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 29/09/2026

also speaking as someone who overuses "super" in everyday speech how dare they

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 29/09/2026

it's interesting to me that intelligence as a word goes from a thing you get ("the freshest intelligences" in an 18th cent newspaper) to a general capacity

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 29/09/2026

yeah I could see that ("artificial" also does weird work for a thing grown as much as engineered + relies on language as we already developed it); I'm at least as iffy on "intelligence," not because I'm against anthropomorphic language (far from it) but because even in people it bundles too much

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 29/09/2026

but also why bother analyzing it when 50/50 it's something else entirely random at work here

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 29/09/2026

this is ridiculous but intellectually very interesting- the new right thinks everything is vibes and content and manifesting so of course changing the adjective has to work to change public opinion right

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 29/09/2026

heading there I got to see a former acquaintance posting one-sentence-per-paragraph slop explaining that now is the time for faculty to supercharge their research with AI and partner with industry. I do not think "industry" is going to partner with me on the history of shipbuilding

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 29/09/2026

chuckling to myself as I post this on LinkedIn and see what happens

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Dan Greene @dmgreene.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Oh the faculty lounge? Where the aloof, lazy profs are planning how to spend their millions on indoctrinating your kid? Is that the same lounge where we've been collecting water in a trash can for months because they haven't fixed the pipe

The drop ceiling has a black
Garbage bag hanging down from it, with a hose leading to a yellow trash can

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 29/09/2026

such is the power of nagash

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 29/09/2026

my best advice for grad students and early career researchers is have hobbies and friends that will force you into a healthier work-life balance. sorry no more time to doom about the job market today, your international coterie of pals need you to fight in the Skeleton War online tonight

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 28/09/2026

bsky.app/profile/newr... they're coming for all of it, everything universities do

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 28/09/2026

this is where I spill the proverbial tea and also rail against the wealthy right-wing philanthropists trying to ensure their vision is what emerges from the ashes. help save universities before it's too late

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 28/09/2026

Five months ago I was fired by the US government. Now, one of the biggest categories on the academic job market is "being right wing." I wrote about what's at stake. buttondown.com/anotherway/a...

buttondown.com

The "free speech" government fired me

"Free speech" advocates are killing free speech

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 28/09/2026

bsky.app/profile/henr...

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 28/09/2026

ok but ep thompson was pretty cool

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ertruitt.bsky.social @ertruitt.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Unboxing day! Over a decade in the making, NECESSARY INVENTIONS: ROGER BACON, THE MIDDLE AGES, AND THE MAKING OF MODERN SCIENCE (PENN Press) is a material object. Thank you to everyone who helped along the way. For sale on October 20. @pennpress.bsky.social

Photo of a box filled with multiple copies of the book. The cover is ochre, and has different images of Bacon, from manuscripts and printed books.

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 28/09/2026

it is wild how bad the online shopping experience is with general retailers at this point (Walmart, Amazon). no respect for the customer, dodging ads and fake products and misleading copy, interruptions begging you to pay for a subscription

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 28/09/2026

This is an important critique and I'm going to continue to beat the AP is bad drum but I want to also add that if your "school" cuts hours a day out you're cutting out nonacademic learning too. I cannot even fathom what these "schools" might do to kids in social terms

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 28/09/2026

on biology and culture he was a Spencer-flavored Lamarckian, like RFK Jr

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 28/09/2026

thinking about William Winwood Reade, who wrote in the late 19th century that "Christianity must be destroyed" because it was too compassionate, and it should now be replaced with the worship of "that awful One to whom it is profanity to pray"

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Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Oh no Gen Z is going to learn how fucked up tv was. They’re going to learn that we had psychics on the news like they were legitimate sources of information

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sanjukta paul @sanjukta.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Wrote a paper.

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 28/09/2026

ooh any links? very curious

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Emily Moin @emilymoin.com · 25/09/2026

Social friction is good. When you know you are demanding someone's time and incurring their judgment, you're more likely to work through a problem independently to the best of your abilities. This preparatory work makes the ultimate consultation more valuable to the patient and the practitioner.

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 27/09/2026

fire emblem fortune's weave is game of the year easily imo, I'm impressed and entranced

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 27/09/2026

I think a lot of the problem here comes down to the heterogeneity of benefits and the homogeneity of costs, but of course since that's a result of the money form itself there has to be room for creative thinking on the other end

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 25/09/2026

i don't have comments on hiring and job interviews because here in academia we don't actually do hiring anymore

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 25/09/2026

"Eliezer Yudkowsky? The fanfiction writer?"

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 25/09/2026

oof you can really see how "rationalist" as opposed to empiricist this is in epistemological terms too huh

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 25/09/2026

I once told two friends of mine who aren't in academia how little money we'd need to properly fund and run a humanities department and both were stunned at how miserly public universities are

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 25/09/2026

real grim truths in this thread

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Henry Snow @henrys.now · 25/09/2026

yeah it's strange because it seems obvious to me that LLM safety will be a lot more like ecology and politics than engineering away the paperclipper but there is still this continued insistence on trying to produce the perfect single model

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